What a drama-filled week it has been. There was news of a major acquisition, leaks, hacks, 'the merge', and, to top it all off, a wholesome development concerning the planet. If you're a gamer, you also likely tuned in to watch the Nintendo Direct and Playstation's State of Play, and probably heard of EVGA's public breakup with Nvidia.
But despite so much going on, Facebook 👑 was apparently at the top of everyone's minds. Ranking #1 this week, the social media giant has maintained its top ranking for four weeks straight. Bill George, a senior fellow at Harvard Business School and former CEO of medical technology company Medtronic, recently told CNBC that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a drag on the company's future and was doomed to fail as a leader.
While Zuckerberg declines as a leader, so does the mental health of Facebook users. A new study published by the American Economic Review confirms the link between Facebook and a "worsening" in reports of anxiety and depression among college students.
While Facebook's parent company Meta has been aware of the harm its products cause, it doesn't seem like it cares. Just recently, it disbanded the so-called Responsible Innovation team whose job was to address concerns about the potential downsides of Meta's products, which include Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
Microsoft, Adobe, Figma: A Tale of Three 👾
Last week's surprise announcement that Adobe will be acquiring competitor Figma for a whopping $20 billion (or 100x of Figma's yearly revenue) caught everyone in the HackerNoon team by surprise. While Adobe may not have been as high up in the rankings this week (it ranked #61), the acquisition and the resulting news did lead to an increase of 150% in trending interest for the maker of Photoshop and XD.
There's a bit of history between Adobe and Figma, and the glue that kept it all together was Microsoft, which ranked #5 in this week's rankings. As this report from CNBC points out, Figma was a pretty big deal at Microsoft and an overwhelming majority of employees at the tech giant preferred the collaborative design tool over Adobe's XD, raising doubts about the future of Microsoft's intimate relationship with bedfellow Adobe.
With the acquisition though, Adobe is expected to become even closer to Microsoft and the premium it's paying to buy Figma can best be explained as a pathway to accessing an even larger audience base for its products and maintaining its dominance in the design world.
Hacker Trolls Uber, Rockstar Games 🤠
Uber began trending this past week after an individual breached the company's internal systems by pretending to be an IT person and tricking an employee into sharing their password. The hacker then went on to leave a note in the company's internal Slack messaging app.
Not satisfied by the hack, the same person, who goes by the name of Teapotuberhacker on the internet, then apparently breached Rockstar Games' systems and dumped footage of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI video game while also claiming they had access to the source code for the mega-popular Grand Theft Auto V. Now the user is trying to get Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive to negotiate a possible deal while offering to sell the GTA V source code for no less than five figures to anyone who can pay.
Understandably, both Rockstar and Uber are not happy. The ride-hailing app said it was investigating the wide-reaching security breach at the company and has informed law enforcement, while RockStar is issuing takedowns left and right to prevent videos of GTA VI's early development footage from being distributed on platforms such as Twitter and YouTube.
According to Reuters, this isn't the first time Uber has been breached: in 2016, a hack exposed the personal information of about 57 million customers and drivers.
Uber ranked #7 in this week's tech rankings.
It's Time to Save the Planet 🌎
Yvon Chouinard, the founder of sustainable wear company Patagonia and HackerNoon CEO David Smooke's all-time favorite human being, announced that his brand was "going purpose."
In a post titled "Earth is now our only shareholder," Chouinard highlighted the future of the company, particularly its ownership structure which will be transferred to two nonprofits: the Patagonia Purpose Trust, which will protect Chouinard’s values and mission of being in the business to save planet earth, and the Holdfast Collective, which fights against climate change.
While Patagonia does not rank in HackerNoon's Tech Company Brief, it ranks #1 in our hearts. Thank you, Chouinard.
And that's a wrap! Thanks for reading Tech Company Brief Issue #16! If you'd like to see which tech companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness, feel free to head down here. See y'all next week.
PEACE! ☮️
